Short stories
The Truly Married Woman and Other Stories
Abioseh Nicol · 1965
Synopsis
Seven short stories from West Africa, illustrated by J. H. Vandi. In “As the Night, the Day”, schoolchildren in a science class pass the responsibility for a broken thermometer back and forth, and young Basu, a boy of Syrian origin, finds himself caught up in the affair; the other stories range from the “truly married” woman to the devil of the Yolahun bridge, the judge's son, the tears of love, the leopard hunt and the sweetness of life in Kumansenu.
Context
The volume was published in London in 1965 by Oxford University Press, in one hundred and twenty pages, in the Three Crowns series, launched in 1962 for authors from the colonies of Africa and South Asia. The same year, its author published a second work of fiction, two African tales, after an essay published the year before. A physician, researcher, vice-chancellor and later diplomat, he was also a poet and the biographer of Africanus Horton.
Who it is for
One hundred and twenty pages, in English, never translated into French. The texts are short and can be read separately.
Prizes and reception
The collection on which its author's standing in literature rests; some of the stories, among them the one about the thermometer, have become set texts for study.
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